What is Shopify? How Does It Work? Pros and Cons

Shopify is an eCommerce CMS that allows anyone to set up and run an online store without the necessary coding experience. Offering more than 75 pre-made themes, you can easily create any store you want, from clothing and accessories to food, toys and more. With features like real-time sales data, integrated payments and inventory management, Shopify makes it easy to start your own business.

What is Shopify?

The Shopify platform is an eCommerce platform that allows you to create your website and sell online. This CMS makes managing a website easy. The Shopify rates are based on a monthly or annual fee plan. It's popular because the pricing is low, and the user interface is easy to navigate. You can build a complete online store for just $29 per month and start selling products online in less than a week.

The Core Functionality of Shopify

Shopify has various features that help you manage your online store. You can update product information, prices, or stock levels with just one click. Plus, they have great customer service that will help you set up your website if need be. You can also customize the look of your website by choosing from hundreds of templates to put on your website or by uploading an image to use as a background. The app also has social media integration to share updates about new items, discounts, and promotions on Facebook.

Shopify Detailed Admin

You'll find many reports and features in the Shopify backend that will help you analyze how your online shop is performing. The number of orders can be viewed at a glance. It will allow you to identify the most successful product pages. You can also view real-time views of your website visitors, so you can see where they are in the funnel.

Amazing Themes

Shopify allows users to customize the look and feel of your store fully. You can even change the theme to match your branding needs. Shopify's Theme Store has over 70 free and premium eCommerce templates. Shopify offers high-quality Shopify themes. It is one of its best selling points. Shopify has many shop templates that you can choose from, and some of them are free.

Social Media Integration

Shopify allows you to sell online, through social media, online marketplaces and brick-and-mortar stores. Shopify can be integrated with Facebook and Instagram to increase your marketing and sales.

There are tons of support.

Shopify's support is exceptional. Shopify wants to help you succeed on its platform. Shopify has a blog where eCommerce professionals share their best tips and tricks. Shopify Academy, now Shopify Compass, was created to allow you to take free eCommerce courses at your own pace. They have many customer service reps that will gladly answer any questions.

Dropshipper Friendly

Shopify claims to offer dropshipping at a lower risk. What's Shopify Dropshipping? Shopify dropshipping allows you to sell products through a supplier who holds inventory and ships the product. It allows you to search for a product, locate a dropshipping provider, create an e-commerce store and upload your products. Once your store is launched, you can start marketing it. Although Shopify also comes with some drawbacks.

Cons of Shopify

Transaction fees

Shopify's transaction fees are 0.5% to 2.0%, whereas most shopping carts have eliminated them over the years. Shopify Payments allows users to waive transaction fees by asking them to accept payment through Shopify Payments.

Expensive add-ons

Shopify has many basic features but lacks the advanced features that eCommerce businesses may need. You will need to buy add-ons to get the more advanced features. Add-ons may increase the monthly subscription fee in some cases.

Content Management Issues

Shopify has some issues with content management. These include duplicate content, duplicate page titles, forced URL structure, and the inability to edit tag page pages.

What does Shopify do?

Shopify is a great tool for small businesses to get their online storefront up and running quickly. This is how Shopify works.

Shopify offers more than 70 store themes. Drag-and-drop capabilities make it easier. You can customize colours, fonts, and images. Your site will also work on mobile. There are unlimited products you can list.
Customers can use Shopify payments to accept credit cards. It is a separate service that allows customers to make payments.
A product card can be embedded and viewed on other websites or social media platforms.
Your products can be sold on multiple websites. Shopify can be used to list your products on Google, eBay, Walmart, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other sites.
Shopify offers a dashboard that displays analytics, reports and other information on mobile and desktop. Shopify Mobile allows you to manage everything from one place: upload product photos, set pricing, deal with refunds and communicate with your staff.

Conclusion

There are many reasons to choose Shopify, but the most important one is that it's simple. You don't need to be a specialized genius or have an engineering degree to build a store on it. It might be your platform if you're looking for a way to get your products out into the world or want to start selling some of your old things around the house.